NEW YORK – CRAIG F. STARR ASSOCIATES, located at 5 East 73rd Street in Manhattan, will open BARNETT NEWMAN: DRAWING DECLARES THE SPACE  on April 21 – June 11, 2005.  The show will include drawings and prints from the 1940’s – 60’s.  The Gallery is open Tuesday – Saturday 11-5:30.

In a 1962 interview with Art in America, Barnett Newman said “I hope that I have contributed a new way of seeing through drawing.  Instead of using outlines, instead of making shapes or setting off space, my drawing declares the space.”  This quote and the artistic vision described in it, forms the basis of BARNETT NEWMAN: DRAWING DECLARES THE SPACE.  The show consists of a selected group of drawings and prints from the artist’s mature period.  Culled from private collections, the show is the most significant presentation of Newman’s work in New York in many years.

Barnett Newman (1905-1970) was a leading figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement.  Born and raised in New York, Newman came of age as an artist in the aftermath of World War II.  Like his friends Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, and Mark Rothko, Newman advanced a new type of painting that shunned traditional imagery in favor of large scale works that conveyed the artist’s individual visual language.   By 1945, Newman had arrived at his signature motif, which he called a “zip,” a striking vertical that punctuated his single-hued canvases.  During the last decade of his life, Newman’s reputation grew as a new generation of artists, especially the Minimalists, was influenced by his work.